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August 26, 2005Suspects

According to the Spiegel and the Mopo, the police in Hamburg are now questioning three people in connection with the "Heroes of Allah" who set off a large-scale dragnet last night. One of them was arrested, and the other two turned themselves in. All three are Chechnyans, and the Spiegel says it is "highly probable" that they are three guys they've been looking for (but do they speak Arabic in Chechnya? not according to the Wikipedia article). A speaker for the police quoted in the Spiegel says that he assumes there were no "concrete plans of attack"; nevertheless, both headlines refer to "terror suspects".

Incidentally, according to the news today, the conversation about "Heroes of Allah" was overheard last night at the Hosltenstrasse train station, just one stop over from where I live. They're saying that the police got 25 tips (I wonder how they get such a curiously precise number) which are now being investigated undercover.

Let's hope that this all turns out to be a red herring and these guys consider themselves heroes of Allah because they passed a test today in their Koran studies, or something like that. The idea that guys with plans to blow stuff up are hanging around town, in my neighborhood no less, is not really enchanting, even if they were stopped this time.